


Something Only in my Dreams

by RavensRedShadow



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-19 02:11:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9413150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavensRedShadow/pseuds/RavensRedShadow
Summary: Arthur likes to imagine that his dreams now would be nice, comforting. Maybe he’d dream about Cobb and Mal both happy and alive, able to grow old together in the real world. Maybe he’d dream about Ari finishing her college degree, her biggest worry getting a B on her exams.But what he really wishes for are dreams of Eames.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A very short story I've been sitting on for a while now. I thought I'd post to get myself back into the mood for writing as I hope to start posting more work soon.
> 
> Hope you enjoy and please as always I am both the writer and editor so if there are any typos I have missed (I'm sure there are a few) please leave a comment and let me know. Of course I won't say no to just a comment about the fic in general ;)

Arthur hadn’t truly dreamed in a while. Not since his army days and honestly those weren’t the dreams he missed. 

He knew when he started in dream share the effects of long term exposure to Somnacin. He thought he never wanted to dream again. He wanted a sleep where all he saw when he closed his eyes was darkness because when you’re across enemy lines you don’t have any good dreams and even when you come back the nightmares…they don’t just fade away.

There were too many nights after that where he’d woke in a cold sweat, screaming, crying and tired all the way to his bones.

It seemed like an out to him, dream share. An easy way to make money and to get rid of the screams he heard at night. He couldn’t have known then what it would do to him.

His dreams didn’t just disappear overnight as he’d hoped. It took years of hours hooked up to a PASIV before he woke up without any memories of dreams. At first he was relieved, he could sleep without visions of the battlefield, but then he had the opposite problem. Now he can’t sleep because when he closes his eyes all he can see is blackness. And that frightens him more than the battlefield ever could.

On nights like tonight, when he can’t even close his eyes, Arthur usually spends the night hunched over paperwork but he’s in between jobs with nothing to do. He doesn’t have family or any real friends (Cobb doesn’t count) so more often than not he’s alone. 

Sometimes Arthur feels like a machine, just a clever forge of a human being. After all humans dream, even his old dog when he was a kid used to dream, but he never does. 

So instead of trying to fall into a sleep where he knows no dreams wait for him, Arthur is half-heartedly flipping through channels in another nondescript hotel room when his phone rings. 

He doesn’t recognize the number but that doesn’t mean much. The only people who have his semi-permanent number change phones almost daily anyway. 

As he answers he really hopes it isn’t Cobb again.

“Hello?”

“Hullo darling. You still awake?”

“Eames,” Arthur breathes, shifting the phone to rest between his jaw and his shoulder, and turning the volume down on the TV, “obviously I’m still awake otherwise I wouldn’t have answered.”

Eames’ husky laugh echoes across the phone line “True, darling, true.” 

He pauses and Arthur almost snaps at him to just spit out why he’s calling when he barely hears a whisper through the phone, “I can’t sleep.”

Arthur blinks, surprised. All those in dream share have bouts of insomnia, another side effect of Somnacin, but they don’t talk about them. At least he doesn’t. 

“Well then, keep me up too. Tell me about your last job.” And he does. Arthur doesn’t really listen; he just lets Eames voice wash over him. He hasn’t heard from the other man in months and it’ll probably be many more before they’re on a job together again. If he was a different man he’d say he misses him. But he’s not.

Eames isn’t a friend, but he’s more than a colleague. When Arthur tries to tell other people about him he says they connected during the Inception job. When Eames asks Arthur what he thinks of him, he says he’s a pain in the ass. But when Arthur thinks about him in the privacy of his own mind…he allows himself to accept that Eames means something to him, in a way that no one else does.

Sometimes he thinks Eames feels the same. There’s a look in his eyes sometimes when he looks at Arthur, something more. But it doesn’t really matter because they’ve never done anything about it and he knows they never will. Maybe if he cared less about Eames, they’d fuck, get it out of their systems. But he does care and so he knows it’ll never happen. Maybe in another life with different choices. But he’s too far gone for a happy ending now and they both know it.

As Eames talks Arthur wonders when Eames stopped dreaming. He wonders if Eames, like himself, had sought out Somnacin as a way out of some awful reoccurring nightmare that plagued him. 

We all have our sins and our scars and even without the dreams I can’t forget mine, Arthur thinks. He wonders if Eames’ scars are as deep as his, if his sins are as dark. They probably are. Eames is no saint, there’s no one who can survive in this business that is.

His words continue to lull Arthur, his voice relaxing as he sinks deeper into the musty hotel pillow. He talks of how brutally cold it is in Russia this time of year, how much he bloody hates that bitch Mandy, and how he’ll never take a job from Andre again. Arthur smiles, if he could dream he wishes it would be of him.

That thought makes him wonder what he would dream about now if he could. Would it be the same dreams of death and pain he’d worked so hard to erase, or would it be something else. 

He likes to imagine that his dreams now would be nice, comforting. Maybe he’d dream about Cobb and Mal both happy and alive, able to grow old together in the real world. Maybe he’d dream about Ari finishing her college degree, her biggest worry getting a B on her exams.

But what he really wishes for are dreams of Eames. Of soft touches and warm lips. He’d dream of things they could never have, a home, and maybe just a little bit of peace.

“Arthur, you still there love?” Arthur hums trying to respond but he’s already fading into unconsciousness, finally too tired to keep his eyes open any longer.

As he slips away into another dreamless sleep he hears Eames chuckle, his voice is soft in his ear, “Sleep well love.” And oh, how he wishes he could.


End file.
